dess Cybele.]

EXPLANATION.

The adventure of Dryope is one of those narratives which have no
connexion with the main story which the Poet is relating, and, if
really founded on fact, it would almost baffle any attempt to guess
at its origin. It is, most probably, built entirely upon the name of
the damsel who was said to have met with the untimely and unnatural
fate so well depicted by the Poet.

The name of Dryope comes, very probably, from the Greek word +Drus+,
'an oak,' which tree has a considerable resemblance to the lotus
tree. If we seek for an historical solution, perhaps Dryope was
punished for attempting to profane a tree consecrated to the Gods,
a crime of which Erisicthon was guilty, and for which he was so
signally punished. All the particulars that we know of Dryope are,
that she was the daughter of Eurytus, and the sister of Iole; and
that she was the wife of Andraemon.

Ovid says, that while Iole was relating this adventure to Alcmena,
Iolaues, who, according to some, was the son of Hercules, by Hebe,
after his apotheosis, and, according to others, was the son of
Iphiclus, the brother of Hercules, became young, at the intercession
of that Goddess, who had appeased Juno. This was, probably, no other
than a method of accounting for the great age to which and
individual of the name of Iolaues had lived.

Ovid then passes on to the surprising change in the children of
Calirrhoe, the outline of which the story may be thus
explained:--Amphiaraues, foreseeing, (by the aid of the prophetic
art, as we learn from Homer, Diodorus Siculus, Pliny and Statius),
that the civil wars of Thebes, his native country, would prove fatal
to him, retired from the court of Adrastus, King of Argos, whose
sister he had married, to conceal himself in some place of safety.
The Argives, to whom the oracle had declared, that Thebes could not
be taken unless they had Amphiaraues with their troops, searched for
him in every direction; but their labour would have been in vain, if
Eriphyle, his wife, gained by a necklace of great value, which her
brother Adrastus gave her, had not discovered where he was.
Discovered in his retreat, Amphiaraues accompanied the Argives, and
while, according to the rules of the soothsaying art, he was
observing a flight of birds, in order to derive an augury from it,
his horses fell down a precipice, and he lost his life. Stat